title: Multiplex biomarkers in blood.
abstract: Advances in the field of blood biomarker discovery will help in identifying Alzheimer's disease in its preclinical stage, allowing treatment to be initiated before irreversible damage occurs. This review discusses some recent past and current approaches being taken by researchers in the field. Individual blood biomarkers have been unsuccessful in defining the disease pathology, progression and thus diagnosis. This directs to the need for discovering a multiplex panel of blood biomarkers as a promising approach with high sensitivity and specificity for early diagnosis. However, it is a great challenge to standardize a worldwide blood biomarker panel due to the innate differences in the population tested, nature of the samples and methods utilised in different studies across the globe. We highlight several issues that result in the lack of reproducibility in this field of research currently faced by researchers. Several important measures are summarized towards the end of the review that can be taken to minimize the variability among various centres.
authors.affiliation: Centre of Excellence for Alzheimer's disease Research & Care, School of Medical Sciences, Edith Cowan University, Joondalup, WA, 6027 Australia.
authors.forename: Veer Bala
authors.initials: VB
authors.lastname: Gupta
authors.affiliation: Centre for Ageing and Alzheimer's, Nightingales, Bangalore, 560043 India.
authors.forename: Ramani
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Sundaram
authors.affiliation: Centre of Excellence for Alzheimer's disease Research & Care, School of Medical Sciences, Edith Cowan University, Joondalup, WA, 6027 Australia ; Sir James McCusker Alzheimer's Disease Research Unit (Hollywood Private Hospital), Perth, WA, 6009 Australia ; Suite 22, Hollywood Medical Centre, 85 Monash Ave, Nedlands, WA, 6009 Australia.
authors.forename: Ralph N
authors.initials: RN
authors.lastname: Martins